Computer Setup

Contents

OSX

First things first. Your terminal program allows you to type commands to
control your computer. On a Mac, you can open the Terminal by going to your
Applications screen and selecting Terminal (it might be in the folder named
“Other”). Or, you can open Spotlight (Cmd + Space) and type “Terminal”.

First, let’s install brew if you haven’t done that yet. Homebrew is a
program that allows you to easily install other software on OSX. In your
terminal, run:

# This downloads the Ruby code of the installation script and runs it
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Run these commands to create a new conda environment. Each conda
environment has its own package versions. This allows us to switch between
package versions easily. For example, this class uses Python 3, but you
might have another that uses Python 2. With a conda environment, you can
switch between those at will.

Windows

Getting set up on Windows is especially prone to error if you aren’t careful
about your configuration. If you’ve already had Anaconda or git installed and
can’t get the other to work, try uninstalling everything and starting from
scratch.

Installing Anaconda:

Visit the Anaconda website and
download the installer for Python 3.5. Download the 64-bit installer if your
computer is 64-bit (more likely), the 32-bit installer if not. You can
Google how to check whether your computer is 64 or 32 bit.

Leave all the options as default (install for all users, in the default
location). Make sure both of these checkboxes are checked:

Install.

Verify that the installation is working by starting the Anaconda Prompt (you
should be able to start it from the Start Menu) and typing python:

Notice how the python prompt shows that it is running from Anaconda. Now
you have conda installed!

From now on, when we talk about the “Terminal” or “Command Prompt”, we are
referring to the Anaconda Prompt that you just installed.

Run these commands to create a new conda environment. Each conda
environment has its own package versions. This allows us to switch between
package versions easily. For example, this class uses Python 3, but you
might have another that uses Python 2. With a conda environment, you can
switch between those at will.

From now on, you can switch to the ds100 env with activate ds100,
and switch back to the default env with deactivate.

Linux

These instructions assume you have apt-get (Ubuntu and Debian).
For other distributions of Linux, substitute the available package manager.

You likely already know this if you’re running Linux, but just in case: your
terminal program allows you to type commands to control your computer. On
Linux, you can open the Terminal by going to the Applications menu and
clicking “Terminal”.

Install wget. This is a command-line tool that lets you download
files / webpages at the command line.

Run these commands to create a new conda environment. Each conda
environment has its own package versions. This allows us to switch between
package versions easily. For example, this class uses Python 3, but you
might have another that uses Python 2. With a conda environment, you can
switch between those at will.

Working on assignments

These instructions are the same for OSX, Windows, and Linux.

To work on assignments, you should download the assignment zipfile (looks like
hw1.zip). Then you can unzip the files into a folder of your choosing. The
staff recommend that you create a parent folder that holds all the assignments
for this class for easier access.

Remember the location of your assignment files because you’ll need to navigate
to the folder to open the notebook.

You’ll notice that all the assignments for this class have a folder structure
that looks something like:

hw1/
func.png
ok_tests/
images/
hw1.ipynb
hw1.ok
something_cool.csv

The file containing the actual assignment ends in .ipynb (short for IPython
notebook). The other files are used for the assignment but you don’t have to
open them unless we ask you to.

Opening notebooks

To open Jupyter notebooks, you’ll navigate to parent directory of the
assignment in your terminal and run: